Modern motor vehicles include a variety of illumination systems, such as headlamps, running lights, brake lights, backup lights, fog lights and others. Other than the vehicle headlamps and fog lights, most illumination associated with a vehicle is intended to increase visibility of the vehicle to others, rather than for improving the ability of a vehicle operator or passenger to better see fore and/or aft of the vehicle.
There are situations where additional flood or spot lighting is advantageous. For example, many vehicles including trucks, sport-utility vehicles (SUVs), crossover utility vehicles (CUVs), and others are used to tow or haul items such as trailers, boats, etc. On arrival at a destination, the vehicle user often will want to unhook and/or inspect the towed item. Alternatively, the user may need to hook up the towed item prior to a trip. Still more, the vehicle user may want to perform tasks near the vehicle, such as pitching a tent, unloading items from the vehicle, and others. These tasks are made more difficult due to poor visibility at dawn, dusk, night-time, or in poorly lit areas. The user's only solution may be to carry extra lighting such as handheld flashlights, spotlights, work lights, or other light sources, but this is often not convenient.
Some level of illumination can be achieved with existing vehicle rear-mounted lighting arrays such as brake lights and backup lights. However, use of such lights requires user interaction, for example placing the vehicle in reverse to actuate the backup lights, depressing the brake pedal to actuate the brake lights, etc. Moreover, rear-mounted lighting arrays for a vehicle typically emit only sufficient light to serve as a warning, for example brake lights to alert others that the vehicle is braking, backup lights to alert others that the vehicle has been placed in reverse, etc. These lighting arrays do not emit sufficient light to properly illuminate the area behind the vehicle for such tasks as hooking/unhooking/inspecting towed items.
To solve this and other problems, the present disclosure relates at a high level to a vehicle lighting system architecture for utilizing a backup light system as a rear spot or floodlight. Advantageously, the described system can be used as conventional backup lighting, but at need increases the intensity of the backup lights to project desired spot or floodlighting over an area to the rear of the vehicle.